Crystal
by Sapphire and Silver
Summary: Toby, CJ, and a lifetime of broken glass between them.


Some nights he can still see shards of glass in her hair.

In the spaces between heartbeats on quiet nights, his mind will still sometimes break loose from its leash and wander two miles across the Potomac, where pale concrete is bathed in the garish light of police sirens. In these moments it doesn't matter how evenly he tries to breathe; he feels his pulse quicken as he makes a jagged circuit around the plaza, cataloguing the faces he finds, adrenaline swelling his heart and veins and leaving no room for even gratitude when he sees them intact. He holds himself like a statue, but in his mind he's rounding the corner at the sight of Josh's unkempt hair. His relief is sharp as he starts to chastise Josh for not answering him, but the words fall away as he sees Josh's hands and shirt and body darkening with blood.

_Didn't you hear me shouting for you?_

Distantly, he hears his own voice breaking as he calls for a doctor, for someone, for anyone.

He tries to breathe his way back to the present, but every time he stays rooted to the spot, the pressure of Josh's head falling into his hands, his knees aching on the unforgiving concrete, reverberates through his body once and leaves him numb.

This is Toby's most vivid memory of that eternal agony of an evening. But it is not his only torment. As he cradles his friend's head and shoulders, he comes face-to-face with CJ, who kneels on Josh's other side and helps to hold him steady. Toby isn't sure, is never quite positive, but thinks he's still yelling for a doctor, for someone, for anyone, when CJ places a hand on his cheek and holds his gaze, nodding infinitesimally. His eyes widen and he regains control over his voice, quieting as paramedics begin to swarm. As one medic pushes his way over to Josh's head and crouches over the unconscious man, CJ rises and pulls Toby up from the ground, putting an arm around his waist almost without realizing it. Toby looks at her again and sees the tear tracks on her face and the blood still smudged on her forehead.

And as the sirens continue to flash, casting hideous blue and crimson light onto their skin, he sees fragments of broken crystal in her hair, glinting with every turn of the siren's bulbs.

There is no time for him to consider this, to contemplate the scarcity of inches there had been between CJ's skull and the passing bullet. By now in his memory Josh is being lifted onto a gurney and carted away by an ambulance and they're not quite sure how they end up in the hospital waiting room or who brought them there, but suddenly there are uncomfortable sofas and harsh fluorescents and a smell of antiseptic.

But later, after a thousand years of waiting and praying and and clenching his fist tight enough to draw blood with his nails, after he is told that Josh will survive, after he fills his lungs fully with air for the first time since the shots rang out, he can think again about the glass raining down on CJ's head, the window shattering where her face had been only seconds before, and he starts to tremble.

He thinks back to her mansion in California, the burn of chlorine in his nostrils, the surge of affection for the woman standing before him, clothes askew and drenched and stuck to her body after tumbling into the swimming pool. He remembers the satisfaction he felt when she agreed to come work for Jed Barlet's campaign, how he knew this would be her chance to shine, how he was sure her voice would become the voice of the campaign, of the candidate, of all they were trying to accomplish.

Was it worth it? Was all of it worth how close it came to losing her?

Toby tries to scrub the blood from under his fingernails that night, and the world starts spinning and he has to sit down and breathe deeply until he no longer pictures blood pouring from a bullet wound in CJ's head.

When he finally figures out how CJ was saved - catching the glint of her necklace in Sam's hand before he absently pockets it again - he comes very close to embracing his deputy, staggered by the debt he owes Sam and by his inability to repay it. He holds himself back and takes his hand instead, less of a handshake than an unnervingly intimate gesture of gratitude, and holds Sam's gaze until the younger man's eyes start to well with tears. Toby's voice is rough as he mutters his thanks, and he abruptly stands and strides out of the room before he can do something undignified like break down under the weight of the raw emotion between them.

It is only then, in his mind's circuitous meandering through Rosslyn, Virginia, that he can manage to shake himself back to the present. He takes a breath to slow the staccato frenzy of his heartbeat, forcing himself to think of Josh alive and out of the hospital, of CJ powering through her press conference after it was all over, her hair combed through and no longer tangled with blood and glass.

Toby is reasonably sure that no one has seen him this way, stuck to a spot on the floor, eyes unseeing as the events of Rosslyn take an encore in his weary mind. He knows he isn't the only one with demons.

Sometimes he wonders what CJ remembers, what she dreams about from that night. Does she feel her skull crack against the asphalt? Does she awaken to the shatter of the cruiser window above her head?

He doesn't know. He doesn't ask.

Some nights he can still see shards of glass in her hair.


End file.
